


moving on and getting over (are not the friends they used to be)

by perfectpro



Series: severed ties [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-24 00:50:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12001479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectpro/pseuds/perfectpro
Summary: “I’m doing alright, you know,” Kent says, because it feels like Swoops needs some reassurance at this point. “I don’t know whether you’ll believe me or not, but it’s true.”





	moving on and getting over (are not the friends they used to be)

**Author's Note:**

> Enough people wanted Kent to be happy that I caved and tried to give him a kind of happy ending. Make of that what you will.
> 
> Title from John Mayer's Moving On and Getting Over, which is about the feel of this entire series incidentally.

When Kent wakes up, he doesn’t need to be told they’re about to land. He can feel it, the bond pushing harder than ever, knowing that Jack is nearby. Kent can’t say that he’s ever held a particular fondness of Providence before, but any affection is surely gone now, and he grimaces as he rubs at his chest uselessly.

Swoops notices, taking out an earbud and arching an eyebrow in a gesture so judgmental it’s almost artful. “I told you that sushi and tacos was a bad plan,” he sing-songs, mistaking Kent’s pain for heartburn.

Heartburn is easier to excuse than getting into the details of his bond, so Kent shrugs it off. “Yeah, yeah, maybe next time I’ll be like you and just get a burger. Your all-American taste buds are bland and boring, begging for some kind of spice.” He glances out the window as the light for seatbelts comes on for their descent.

The guys who are awake join in on the chirps, jostling some of the others to wake them up. Any other game, and Kent would be comfortable and happy to be with his team, ready to play hockey and light it up on the ice.

The bond aches, and his pain is a living thing that writhes within him, coming to life with proximity to the person that created it. Providence is waiting to greet them, and somewhere in that landscape is Jack Zimmermann, who doesn’t feel anything for Kent at all.

-x-

Jack texts before the game, asking if they can get together afterwards. It’s something Kent knew would happen, knew that he needed to be prepared for it. He should say no, give off a half-assed excuse for being to tired. It will be true, because they’ll both have at least twenty minutes of ice time under their belts by the end of the night, but Kent hangs out after games and it’s never that much of a problem.

 _Sure_ , he sends, only hesitating a second.

He thinks about the last conversation they had, Jack talking about his new bondmate. Kent doesn’t know whether they’re living together or if they only see each other on the weekends, but he doesn’t want to risk showing up to Jack’s apartment and have the guy who replaced him stare awkwardly throughout the meal.

 _Let’s get dinner. I’m feeling Chinese_ , he adds, because this isn’t going to be a fun meeting by any chance, but Kent would at least like it to not be excruciatingly painful.

Jack agrees, and they make tentative plans for a place near the hotel that the Aces are staying in. That way, Kent can just walk back after the shit-show of a get-together finishes and not ask Jack for a ride and spend time with him in an enclose metal space traveling down the road at 50 pmh. That’s just a disaster waiting to happen.

The pain has gotten worse since they’ve gotten to rink. Typically Kent can push past it and focus completely on the game at hand, but it’s a yanking sensation that wants to lead him from the visitor’s locker room to the home team’s, where Jack is. When they’re on the ice together, it’s going to be so much worse, and Kent can’t believe that he forgot how piercing it can get.

He sits in the stall a little longer than he would normally but it’s not long enough to be noticeable, or he doesn’t think it is until Swoops knocks his helmet into his knee. “Come on, Cap, we’ve got a bloodbath to kickstart. If you get more points than me, I’ll buy takeout tonight,” he announces, the teasing tone poised to hide something.

“Can’t, Jack and I are getting dinner tonight,” Kent responds, rubbing his chest in a fruitless attempt at soothing the phantom pain.

“Hope he’s not too pissed after you beat him,” Jules calls from where he’s taping his stick.

A few of the other guys echo sentiments, because it’s not a secret that Kent and Jack were close in Juniors. It’s a good thing they kept the bond under wraps for those years, even though he hadn’t wanted to at the time. This way, no one thinks it’s weird that he’s getting together with an old teammate after the game.

No one except for Swoops, that is, who is staring at him as though he’s grown a second head. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he says, voice kept carefully lowered.

“I’ll be back before curfew.” Kent already knows that this is a bad idea, he doesn’t need Swoops to spell it out for him. He and Jack will get together and have a sufficiently uncomfortable dinner where Kent won’t be able to stop remembering that there was a time that seeing Jack felt like completion instead of something jagged and unfinished lodged within him. It will be terrible enough that they probably won’t try to see each other off the ice when the Falconers are in Vegas later in the season.

Swoops narrows his eyes and grits his teeth together, apparently preventing himself from saying what he wants. “Whatever,” he snaps, pursing his lips as he turns away.

-x-

On the ice, Kent looks at Jack across the faceoff dot and wonders how it would feel to be able to approach this as any other game. That and the agonizing twist in his gut when Jack meets his eyes, because Kent’s bond knows that there’s supposed to be something more. They blink at each other, and typically Kent will take the opportunity to exchange a few chirps, but his stomach flips and he forces himself to wait for the puck to drop.

He loses; Jack’s stick gets it away cleanly and knocked back to one of his wingers, and then they’re off.

Kent has never played an NHL game without some level of pain, because it’s a physical sport and players aren’t inclined to pull their checks against a team’s best player. This is unlike anything he’s experienced before, the bond twisting and pulling him to where his subconscious wants to put him.

Every time that he pushes past the pain, it perks up moments later, rearing its ugly head every time that he catches sight of Jack. Not as bad as it when Jack had first bonded those few months ago, not nearly as bad as that, but more reminiscent of that than the dull throbbing that he’s become accustomed to.

“Lock the fuck in,” he hisses to himself as he sits on the bench. He’s going to pull himself together and help his team win, and all he’s done so far is lose faceoffs and have to sprint to keep the Falconers away from Quincy in the net.

Momo shoots him a glance and then just nods, apparently finding whatever he needed in Kent’s face. Kent grips his stick and tries to think about it as just one game, one game in eighty-two, and he doesn’t need to obsess over it the way that he is.

-x-

Jack is outside the locker room, standing to the side and texting as he pushes hair damp from the shower out of his eyes. Kent pauses and glances back before he walks out, catching Swoops’ eyes. Swoops is standing rigid by his stall, finally tearing his eyes away and shaking his head.

Look, Kent already knows that this is beyond dumb. But the bond aches more when he’s near Jack because a part of him is always going to hope that it will snap into place the way it did when they first locked eyes all those years ago. The hope is probably the worst part, because in Vegas he can tuck himself away and try to forget about it for a while. Still, Jack is right there, waiting for him, and Kent is always going to reach out for him.

“Hey,” Jack says, and Kent starts, jumping a bit as he turns around.

Any kind of greeting is inadequate, so Kent pastes a smile on his face as he responds in kind. “Good to see you,” he manages, ignoring the stabbing feeling in his gut as best he can.

There’s a moment of hesitation where it’s clear Jack wants to offer his hand but he doesn’t, and Kent is thankful that he won’t have to touch Jack. God only knows how much worse everything if they touched for the first time since Jack has bonded again. He grits his teeth and smiles, instead, and this is probably the best it’s going to get.

Only a dinner to get through, then, and Kent presses his nails into his palm in an attempt to focus on that pain instead, closer to reality and to Jack than the sharp pinpricks that become knives jammed into his skin when he thinks about his bond, trying to reconnect to something that’s not even there anymore. He clears his throat and keeps his eyes on the floor. “Ready to go?”

It’s Jack’s turn to jump a little, and he does before pulling out his keys. “Yeah, we can do that,” he says, going quiet as they walk out of the building. “So, do you traditionally charge goaltenders like that or do you just particularly hate Snowy?” he asks, giving a humorless smile as though he doesn’t need Kent to answer.

“I just really hate overtime,” Kent replies, which is a shitty excuse but it’s not like Jack’s going to believe him anyway. It’s as though Jack’s never made a dirty play in his life, like they didn’t spend two years in Juniors together, bonded and knowing the best way to draw the other team into penalties.

So maybe it was a stupid move, but he got the goal, and he’s not going to apologize for that even though some part of him really wants to.

Jack drives them to the restaurant, and there isn’t a flicker of recognition in the waitress’s eyes as she leads them back to their table. Really, it’s the way that they both prefer for meals to start out.

They order soup and then entrees and manage to meander through what little small talk is still available to them before exhausting the topic of what the guys from Rimouski are up to now. Once the soup is delivered, they eat in silence until Kent decides to go ahead and bite the bullet, nothing to be gained by avoiding it.

“How’s the new bondmate?” he asks, trying to make the question seem as offhand as possible as he picks up his water glass. There probably isn’t a way for an old bondmate to ask how the new bondmate is offhand, and Jack probably saw this coming when he asked if he could see Kent after the game, but this is their new reality. Kent is some combination of the jilted lover and woman scorned, and Jack is the girl who sent the Dear John letter or whatever the fuck.

“Bitty is good,” Jack answers, choosing to ignore all of the awkwardness in the room in favor of talking about his new bond. “He’s at Samwell right now. If the game had been on Friday he probably would have been here. I’d love for you guys to–” He cuts himself off just before he runs the entire evening into the ground, but Kent can hear the words that went unsaid.

I’d love for you guys to meet.

Jack cuts his gaze elsewhere, maybe to the fish tank that’s somewhere behind Kent right now. Kent tries to concentrate on cultivating the most blank face possible to cover for the emotions that are crushing him.

The only reason Jack said it is because it’s polite, of course you would want people to meet your bondmate. Regular people in your life, that is, not the shadow of a person who you used to have a bond with until it was severed. He got ahold of himself, he stopped before it was out, so at least there’s there.

“Glad he’s doing well,” Kent says finally, because the silence has stretched too far.

Nodding, Jack finally looks back at the table, though he still won’t meet Kent’s eyes. “Yeah.” He rests his hands on the table and takes a deep breath before beginning to apologize. “I’m so sorry about this, Kent.”

Kent was mad for the first month after he’d talked to Jack, sickened by the thought of Jack purposely keeping the possibility to himself when he knew what it could do to Kent. But being angry was exhausting, and Kent was trying to use all of his available energy on getting better and just being pissed about something that he couldn’t change. So it’s not an ideal situation, but Jack doesn’t need to apologize for having a new bond. That’s not something that Kent is going to ask for.

“You don’t have to,” he starts, cutting himself off when Jack winces and holds up his hand.

“I really do, and I’m sorry. I just, I can’t look at you without… Without thinking about what we used to be like. You know, before. And I know I’m the one that caused all of this, and I feel terrible about it, Kent, but looking at you makes me feel worse,” he confesses, resting his hands on the table and finally meeting Kent’s eyes.

There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach. The restaurant is busy around them, a couple of groups of college kids coming in late from studying for exams. Their waitress is across the room, passing out menus to one of the groups and taking their drink orders. The pain that’s been more active since the team landed in Providence ratchets up until he has to close his eyes.

If his light sensitivity comes back now, there’s really no justice in the world. Kent tries to block out the noise around them, focus on the cool glass on the tabletop underneath his fingertips or the scent of his egg drop soup wafting towards him.

Jack sighs, a big breath, something he’s been holding in. “I don’t think I can do this, Kent. Seeing you like this… It’s too painful. I’m sorry,” he says, voice lowered to a whisper.

It’s too painful. The whole day, Kent’s felt like he’s had knives lodged in his skin, like he’s learning how to live without vital organs, but having dinner like this is too painful for Jack. There’s a kind of buzzing in his ears as he opens his eyes to see Jack pulling out his wallet and going to stand.

“I’ll get the check, you don’t need to worry about it,” Jack announces, because of course he’s fucking doing this.

“You don’t have to get the check,” Kent grits out, giving a smile that undoubtedly comes off as a grimace. “You’re not the only millionaire at the table anymore.” He forces himself to look straight ahead as he watches Jack slowly pocket his wallet and then pause as he turns to leave.

Stopping to clear his voice, Jack tells him, “I really am sorry, Kent.”

Kent waits a full minute to be sure that he’s gone before flagging their waitress down and asking if he can get their order to go. She nods and rushes off to the kitchen, and he pulls out his phone to text Swoops, _takeout in my room in 15_.

-x-

He doesn’t run into any of his teammates in the hall, which is pretty much perfect, because right now he’s even regretting texting Swoops to hangout. It wasn’t a long walk from the restaurant to the hotel, but it was long enough for Kent to run through the conversation a couple of times, plenty to convince him he’d be better of spending some time alone before trying to interact with people again.

But Swoops is already suspicious enough since Kent is back early from the dinner, so Kent resigns himself to a night in as he opens the door to let Swoops in.

“That was quick,” he comments, making a beeline to the containers that Kent brought back and set on the bed. He opens the Mongolian beef that Jack ordered and sets it aside for the sweet and sour chicken that serves as Kent’s staple.

“We didn’t have much to talk about,” Kent says, trying to be as noncommittal about it as he can be. Now that it’s had time to sink it, he thinks that he’d be better off keeping it to himself.

It’s clear that Swoops doesn’t believe him, as he just narrows his eyes and pokes around the boxes with chopsticks. “I don’t even get why you would see him in the first place,” he mutters, picking a chunk of pineapple out of the sweet and sour chicken mix. “He can’t fucking help; the only things you guys can do is sit there and feel terrible.”

People never give Swoops enough credit. Other than Quincy, he’s probably the most perceptive member on the team, and Quincy is a goalie so he barely even counts. It’s barely been a minute and he’s already hit the problem right on the nose.

Kent takes Jack’s rejected Mongolian beef and a pair of chopsticks for himself as he takes pulls the desk chair over to sit down in. “Yeah, well, we felt pretty terrible pretty quickly so we cut it short. It’s quality, not quantity,” he quips, offering a sardonic smile as making a deft swipe with his chopsticks to liberate one of the pieces of chicken from the container that Swoops is holding.

Rolling his eyes, Swoops shrugs and twists away so Kent won’t be able to steal any more pieces. “So are you guys going to keep meeting up or was once enough? Because you’re just torturing yourself here.”

It’s like a Band-Aid, he just needs to rip it off. Taking a breath to brace himself, Kent informs his friend, “We’re not meeting up again. Jack said it was too painful.”

There’s a beat, and then Swoops sets the food down and leans forward. “Are you telling me that he just fucking… That piece of shit,” he swears, standing suddenly and pacing towards the door. For a horrible moment, Kent thinks that he’s going to go find Jack and do something horribly stupid. Instead, he turns around and starts a loop, walking the length of the room as he hisses curse words intermittently.

“Where the fuck does he get off at? Thinking that he can be the one to tell you that it’s too painful for him when you’re the one hurting. Has he never bothered to read anything on severed bonds or is his head shoved too far up his ass for that?” Swoops demands, whirling around as Kent fishes another piece of chicken out of the container that was set aside.

Kent shrugs, then remembers something that Jack mentioned when he called after he bonded again. “He read some of the stuff apparently. Said it didn’t sound pleasant,” Kent admits, the words taking on a sour tone as he thinks about that conversation.

The room stills, all of Swoops’s momentum gone in an instant. He walks back over to the desk and grabs Kent, pulling him into a crushing hug. “I’m so sorry he did this to you, and I’m sorry that he’ll never know how it feels. You deserve so much better,” he says, so gently that Kent can’t find it in himself to pull away.

They stay like that, Swoops holding onto him for longer than Kent thinks he really needs to be held, but it seems to be more for Swoops’s benefit than Kent’s on some level so he sinks into the feeling for a little longer until his stomach makes a noise and he remembers that he still hasn’t really eaten yet. He glances at the Mongolian beef and wrinkles his nose, because Jack has never changed his order in all the years that Kent’s known him for. Pulling back from Swoops, Kent asks, “Can I have the chicken?”

Swoops stares at him, his gaze much more intense than the question warrants. “You can have all of the chicken,” he promises, like there’s some sort of lack of chicken in the world but he’s going to make sure that Kent gets as much chicken as he wants.

-x-

On the plane, Kent wiggles into his seat and prepares to head back to Vegas, where he’ll be far enough away from Jack that the bond won’t pulse like it does when they’re near. His teammates are talking around him, glad to be finishing up the road trip, and the noise of their conversations swirls around him as he sinks into his thoughts.

When they get back to Vegas, he’ll go to his apartment and clean it, the thorough kind that he typically reserves for when he leaves for the offseason. That didn’t happen this year, because he didn’t leave when he thought he would due to being what amounted on house arrest thanks to Jack’s boyfriend or whatever. When he did eventually go back to New York, he didn’t bother with cleaning, just threw things into luggage and bought his ticket before his headaches started up again.

It’s time to clean it out, get rid of the junk that he accumulates so easily. He starts a mental checklist, because the guest bedrooms have crap piled up that he throws in there when he can’t be bothered to find an actual place to put it. He should go through his closet, too, because he doesn’t need the promotional stuff from past deals, and there’s no sense in keeping it if he’s not going to use it.

Things will be easier to handle when there’s not so much of it. Kent figures that’s true for pretty much anything, and it serves fine as a life motto. He wishes that he could clear out his memories as well, trash the ones that don’t help him to make room for some good ones. No sense in keeping most of Juniors, really, and like hell if he’s keeping all the months that he couldn’t open his eyes without getting a headache thanks to Jack’s thoughtlessness.

That’s what it amounts to, when everything else is wiped away and only reality is left. It doesn’t matter how either of them feel about it, whether Jack feels justified or if Kent is still heartbroken and clinging to the future that they could have had together. The bottom line when everything is said and done is that it happened, and now Jack is fine while Kent will never be able to bond again.

That’s just what it is.

“You could sue him,” Swoops says suddenly, having come over from the back of plane where he was playing cards with some of the guys.

Kent blinks, pauses, tries to think of what he could be talking about.

“There are a bunch of cases, and the plaintiff wins most of the time. Juries are suckers for stuff like that, pretty obviously. I mean, they’re not heartless,” he continues, taking Kent’s jacket off the empty seat and sliding into it, using the jacket as a blanket.

Kent thinks about it for a second and then asks, “What?” Because, Swoops typically at least introduces the topic of conversation before barreling forward.

Swoops blinks at him, as though Kent is the one that’s being clueless. “You could sue Jack. Or the Zimmermanns, I guess, or even the rehab center for hiring whatever piece of shit that did the procedure in the first place. I bet they’d settle out of court, no one would want that kind of press,” he muses, fishing earbuds out of his pocket and unwinding them in his lap.

No one wants that kind of press, Kent included. “I’m not suing anyone,” he says, keeping his voice low. Swoops is still the only guy on the team who knows about the severed bond, and Kent would prefer to keep it that way.

“Why not? Suffering and damages applies whether it was intentional or not,” Swoops protests as though that’s the only reason that Kent would think it’s not a good idea.

Kent thinks of all the years that he had gear handed down from other kids in the neighborhood, of when his mom would come home to tuck him into bed and change the maid’s uniform from the hotel for her waitress garb before heading back out to work. When he got to Rimouski, he and Jack would go to dinner and Jack would pay so thoughtlessly, handing a credit card over with his father’s name when the bill was set in front of them. Kent’s first year being on an NHL salary, he paid off his mom’s house and bought her a car, and he only cried after she started to.

Sitting at the table last night in a restaurant that wasn’t even all that nice, Kent handled the bill, because he doesn’t need Jack’s money any more than his pity.

If Kent did sue, the Zimmermanns would settle outside of court and give him however much he asked for. He knows they would, because when Kent sees Bob, Bob looks everywhere except for Kent’s eyes. Alicia can barely look at him at all.

Clenching his jaw and looking out the window, Kent says, “I don’t need their money.”

He has money, enough to where his mom is never going to have to worry about making ends meet again, enough to where he can write a blank check when he wants to. Enough to where he can make donations to the charities of his choice, because hockey isn’t a cheap sport by any means and those kids still deserve a chance to play as much as anyone else. He has enough money to where he can do what he wants with it, and he doesn’t need anything from the Zimmermanns.

Digging out earbuds of his own, Kent connects them to his phone and pulls up some white noise that he’ll be able to fall asleep to as he drowns Swoops out.

-x-

He actually does get around to cleaning, doing more than usual, uncovering things he hasn’t really seen since moving from Cap’s place to his own apartment. He gets boxes packed to take down to Good Will, and the guest bedroom actually looks like a guest bedroom instead of a junked up place where he threw things when he didn’t know what to do with them.

He moves through the entire apartment, thinking long and hard in an attempt to remember when the last time he used a cheese grater was, or even if he’s ever used it. “Fuck it, I can buy it shredded,” he says to himself, tossing the item in another Good Will bag.

The kitchen proves to be a place where he has way more crap than he’s ever used, even though he wouldn’t call his cooking skills subpar. Why does he own an egg beater when he could use a fork for that? He has some ceramic bowl for juicing citrus, which is something he’s never done in his life, and even if he was the suburban dad type to host brunches with freshly made juice he’d just buy it from a farmer’s market. They juice there, don’t they?

He glances over at the door as he hears the sound of a key slipping in, watching as Swoops comes through with a half-hearted wave as he chatters on the phone. “Don’t mess with the table,” Kent calls, hoping that Swoops won’t try to touch the stacks of papers that Kent needs to go through.

Swoops gives a thumbs up and arches an eyebrow at the mess but don’t say anything about it, telling the person on the phone, “Yeah, yeah, sounds good.”

Kent goes back to sorting through cabinets, filling up another box for Good Will before he decides that he should probably go through his closet. There’s tons of stuff he has from old sponsorships that he doesn’t wear anymore, so he’ll start there, he reasons, giving Swoops a wave as he wanders back down the hall.

By the time that Swoops comes to find him, Kent has gone through most of his closet and has set aside the stuff he won’t be needing anymore. “It’s amazing how much crap you can collect when you don’t go through it,” he comments as Swoops leans on the doorframe and eyes the pile of stuff judgmentally.

“Are you cleaning for a reason?” Swoops asks, moving towards to the front of the apartment where most of the newly packed boxes are.

Kent shrugs, turning back around. “Just something I wanted to go through.”

Swoops steps away from the door and meanders over to the dresser, pulling open a drawer at random. “Oh, hey, these are the jerseys you wanted to get framed, right?” he asks, pulling out the top one which was the first Aces jersey that Kent ever wore.

“Yeah, my mom’s been getting onto me about it. She wants to put them up in the house but I think it’ll just look tacky. Do your parents have your old jerseys hanging?” he asks, tossing a few hats in his giveaway pile.

“Only one. They remodeled the house and my mom said she wasn’t going to make room for any others that I wanted.” Digging a little deeper, Swoops reaches past the Aces jerseys and pulls out a white jersey with blue accents. “Throwback to Juniors; I still have mine packed up in my room back home.”

Turning to see Swoops holding the white Rimouski Oceanic jersey, Kent spares a grin and resists the urge to reach out fold it back up, stowed away until he wants to be nostalgic again. “I won the Memorial Cup with that team, so I figured I’d bring a piece of them with me.” His hands twitch at his sides to put it back.

Eying the white, Swoops glances back to the drawer as a sinking feeling settles in Kent’s stomach. “This one is the away jersey, isn’t it? Where’s the home jersey?” He reaches out and moves some of the other jerseys aside, finally gripping the navy blue one that Kent has grabbed so many times during the worst nights.

Unaware of Kent trying to control his breathing behind him, Swoops tucks the away jersey back into place and pulls out the one they wore during home games. It’s front facing, the logo greeting Swoops’s eyes as Kent desperately hopes that he doesn’t turn it around or notice the number on the arms. He feels sick, like he shouldn’t even be here, and he can’t say anything, can’t bring himself to do anything about it.

Swoops shifts his arms, turning the jersey slowly, and Kent can tell the exact moment that Swoops realizes what this is. He pauses for a moment and then flips the jersey the rest of the way. Kent closes his eyes so that he doesn’t have to read the name on the back.

“Why do you have Jack’s jersey?” Swoops asks, clearly trying to be careful with the question, and Kent hates how fucking cautious he has to be.

Kent turns back to his closet and tries to focus on the clothes he’s already looked through. “We traded at the end of the season. After the Memorial Cup,” he answers, forcing the words out. He finally reaches out and grabs the jersey, pulling it from Swoops’s grasp easily, the other man letting it go easily. “I wanted us to trade the home jerseys because I never felt at home without him, and I wanted to have something for when we got drafted and couldn’t be together all the time.”

Some part of him thinks that it’s because he knew the break was coming and he wanted something to get through it with. Those last few months were so strained that it’s almost surprising that they lasted as long as they did.

There’s a moment, and then Kent is being crushed to Swoops’s chest as his winger tries to hunch around him almost protectively. “I hate this for you, and I hate Zimmermann for doing this to you. You deserve so much better than this,” he whispers fiercely. “I can’t believe he did this to you.”

-x-

After the jersey has been refolded and put back into place, Kent digs some beers out of his fridge and brings them out onto the patio to sit with Swoops, who won’t stop looking at him with something that’s almost like pity but more sorrowful. It makes Kent hyper aware of everything he does, so he picks up his bottle opener and toasts their beers together, eyes on the sunset in front of them.

Swoops lags a little bit in his movements but he follows quickly enough, taking a drink of his beer that turns into half the bottle. He’s obviously still upset about everything, the jersey and the severed bond and the fact that Jack won’t see Kent anymore. Frustration comes off of him in waves, something Kent reads easily because they’ve always been obvious to each other, on and off the ice.

“I’m doing alright, you know,” Kent says, because it feels like Swoops needs some reassurance at this point. “I don’t know whether you’ll believe me or not, but it’s true.”

Jaw clenched, Swoops tips the bottle back against and finishes it off easily. Kent passes another one over without comment, and Swoops takes it gratefully and gets it open as quickly as he can. “How can you be okay with this?” he asks, sounding almost anguished with the weight of that question.

Kent takes a drink and shrugs. “I’m not really okay with it, but I’m better than I used to be. And the past couple of months have been worse than usual, but I’m getting back to normal. The bond has been severed for years, Swoops, and you can’t tell me that you thought I was sad all the time before you knew about it.” His mom has told him before that she sometimes forgot about it, only remembered when she would catch him staring off at nothing and absentmindedly rubbing at his chest.

It’s clear that this isn’t going to cut it for Swoops. “We should have known,” he says, keeping his gaze on the Vegas skyline as he says it. “You’re our guy. The whole team basically has the mantra of ‘protect the captain’ going at all times, and we somehow missed the fact that you have a severed bond? You shouldn’t have had to hide it the way that you did.”

“How did I hide it? I didn’t talk about it, that’s all. So maybe it’s a lie of omission, but you guys don’t need to know. I’m fine,” Kent presses, because he is.

Swoops waves a hand, clearly not concerned with the fact that Kent was keeping it from them, only that they missed it. “How can you be fine, though? Your bond is severed, Kent, and you still go onto the ice and make the rest of us look like we’re playing a pickup game in the neighborhood. People with severed bonds spend the rest of their lives in and out of the hospital or in constant therapy. Most of them kill themselves in the first year.”

With a shrug, Kent takes another drink. “I just kept waking up. It doesn’t really hurt anymore unless I think about it, so I just try not to think about it. How do you know so much about severed bonds, anyway?” he asks, glancing at Swoops as he lowers his sunglasses.

There’s a beat, and Swoops purses his lips as he looks at the bottle in his hand speculatively before lifting it to his mouth quickly. “I did a lot of research on them a while ago. Not after I found out you had one, but before. Like high school or something like that. I was just interested in it.” He pauses and shrugs, almost self-deprecating, and then takes another drink.

“Kind of a weird thing to be interested in. Morbid,” Kent comments, because it’s not like there’s anything particularly enlightening about severed bonds.

Swoops shrugs again, the motion clearly forced. “I was just trying to learn about bonding in general, and it was when all of this new information about severed bonds was coming onto the scene. I read a bit of it, stayed updated when the laws got passed and all of these doctors had their licenses revoked because they’d be doing sketchy procedures.” He stops, suddenly, as though he’s just realized how close he’s come to talking about what Jack did to Kent.

He hesitates and then glances over to Kent, who’s been quiet. Kent doesn’t look angry, though, just thoughtful, and then he asks, “Why were you so interested in bonding? Weren’t your classes enough?”

When Kent looks over, Swoops is looking somewhat desperately at the beer in his hand before finishing it off. Automatically, Kent reaches over to offer him a new one, but Swoops waves him away after a moment of thought. “Are you okay?” he asks hesitantly.

“Yeah, um, I’m good.” Starting to peel the label off, Swoops shrugs and then starts, “I’m going to tell you this, and no one else knows. My family and my best friend from Juniors, but no one else. Especially no one in Vegas. You can’t tell anyone, okay?”

Kent can’t think of any time that Swoops has sounded this serious, maybe after they lost in the Cup final a few years ago. “I won’t tell anyone,” he promises, a sick kind of feeling creeping through him as he thinks about what it would be.

Breathing in, Swoops nods to himself. “When my mom was pregnant with me, she got into a car accident. Her stomach hit the steering wheel, but she wasn’t hurt, and when they went to the hospital they said that I was fine. Everything checked out physically, and it wasn’t until I was born that they realized I’d been affected. I can’t bond,” he says, looking Kent dead on, unreadable.

Blindsided, Kent can’t do anything other than nod at the news. “You’ve never been able to bond?” he asks, hating how his voice betrays how shocked he is, how impossible he finds it. He’s never known Swoops to be bonded before, but that’s totally different than thinking he won’t ever be.

With a shrug, Swoops peels off another piece from the bottle and sets it on the table between them. “Nope. I saw a few specialists about it before I went to high school, and none of them were able to figure out what was wrong. That part of me, I guess, they said that it was just empty space where I was supposed to form a bond. Nothing they could do about it.”

He doesn’t sound that broken up about it, which Kent guesses makes sense since it’s not like he knows what he’s missing. “Well, if it helps,” he starts, trying to sound as steady as he can, “bonding isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

A beat of silence passes between them, something that could be fragile if broken at the right angle, and then Swoops breaks into laughter and grabs the unopened beer that Kent had offered him earlier along with the bottle opener. He pops the top off and then raises the bottle in a toast, reaching over to clink it loudly against the one that Kent hasn’t even finished off yet.

“You’re a good guy, Parser,” Swoops finally announces when they’ve gotten ahold of themselves.

Smile twitching on his lips, Kent nods in acknowledgement. “Not so bad yourself, Jeff,” he agrees, finally turning back to the sky that’s now being lit up by the lights from the Strip. “Want to invite some of the guys over for drinks and Mario Kart?” he asks.

Flicking his bottle cap over to the table, Swoops allows a grin to stretch over his mouth. “The only thing I like more than kicking y’all’s asses on Mario Kart and drinking you under the table is an old-fashioned shutout. You call up the guys, I’ll get everything set up,” he announces, already headed back inside.

Kent pulls out his phone and rolls his eyes, listening to Kit meow at Swoops until he presumably gives in and pets her. He opens the group chat and types out an invite, a familiar warm feeling settling in his stomach. His guys have his back, they always do. He has theirs, too, when they let him.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm helpless-in-sleep on tumblr, please let me know if you liked it!
> 
> Also, I'm fairly sure this is only other thing I'll be writing in this universe but I didn't have plans to expend it at all originally so apparently anything's possible. But I have two other sequels to write that I'm trying to prioritize, so I hope I don't get distracted again.


End file.
